A Tale of Two Dogs

Mega Man:“When that mega rat, Dr. Wily, kidnaps our dogs, Captain N and I wind up
in turtle soup.It’s a dog-fight
getting out, but if his giant robot takes over Videoland, we could all bite the
dust!”

In a startling twist of events, the
diabolical Dr. Wily has joined forces with Dr. Right to bring peace to
Videoland at last.

In Dr. Right’s lab, the two doctors of
science were working on a giant robot with a round, egg-shaped yellow face-like
body that had a red peace sign where the nose would be, and two eyes and a
smile painted on it.There was a blue
band going around the middle of the body, separated by where the peace sign
was.It had blue arms and red pincers on
the end; the arms looked like half-pulled accordions.It also had two long cylindrical legs, in length about seven
eighths the height of the egg-shaped face.Its kneecaps were painted blue, as were the “sandals”!On the top was a clear dome and the control
chamber.Right now, Wily and Right were
on an automated floor panel on electronic scaffolding, and Wily operated the
machine that put the final touch on the robot. . . installing the left arm in
its socket with an electronic crane.

“Building a super robot to keep peace in
Videoland was a brilliant idea, Dr. Right,” Wily said with a pleasant smile.

Right hugged him with his left arm.“Its first act of peace was bringing the two
of us together in friendship.”Wily
used his left hand to press a down button on a control attached to their floor
panel that caused the panel to descend slowly to the floor of the lab.

When it landed, Wily jumped off.“I’ll be back with my new control device
before I can say, ‘Peace.’ ”A blue
warp opened in front of him to his lab, and he stepped through.

In Dr. Wily’s lab, Doc Robot, who looked
suspiciously like the mad scientist, was using the scientist’s monitor to view
the situation in Right’s lab.When Wily
emerged from the warp, he laughed, “Heh, heh, heh!I can say peace all right. . . a piece of cake to steal
that super robot!”

Doc Robot turned the chair around and
stood.“Master, is it time to take over
Videoland?” the robot asked in a monotone version of Wily’s voice.“Is it, huh?Is it?”

“Calm down, metal-head!” Wily snapped,
sitting in his seat and turning towards his monitor.“We can’t do anything until Captain Ninny and Mega Moron come
back from Topland with the last energy tank.”Topland, a dizzying section of Megaland, appeared on the screen.It was spinning like a top.

Right now, Captain N and Mega Man were in
Topland, trying to find Top Man.The
two came out from behind a column, and they were arguing about their dogs.“I’m tellin’ you, Mega Man, the baddest dog
in Videoland is Duke!” Kevin argued, whispering.

“No way, Captain N,” Mega Man retorted in a
whisper.“My robo-dog, Rush, is the new
mega mutt!”The two heroes continued
down the hallway.

Rush and Duke, their canines, came from
behind the column.Rush had a
mechanical voice, and he said, “There they go again!Arf!”

The robo-cat spat out a large ball of
yarn.Kevin drew his Zapper.“This is no time to play ball!” he
exclaimed.He shot the ball, and it
turned into smaller balls that fell to the floor.Growling, Duke jumped up to the huge cat and scared it.The mechanized feline turned around and
ran.Duke chased after it.

After Mega Man and Kevin had taken care of
the last of the balls of yarn, Rush turned into a jet sled.“Looks like our flight’s leaving!” Mega Man
said, getting on his dog.Kevin got on
behind him.

“Follow that dog!” Kevin ordered.Rush fired his afterburners and took the
heroes the way Duke had run.Soon, they
encountered severe turbulence. . . several small tops flying their way.Kevin shot the tops to video-dust before he
and his friends ran into them.

He was right.Duke was growling and barking at the spinning Top Man.Mega Man stopped Rush right beside
Duke.“I’ll hit him with my
punch-line!” he said, aiming his left fist at the spinning robot.He fired his fist as the Hard Knuckle, which
bashed Top Man in the head, stopped him in his tracks, and caused him to fall
to the floor and evaporate to video-dust.A yellow energy tank appeared in Top Man’s place.

“All right!” Kevin said.“We got the last energy tank for the peace
robot.”He knelt and petted Duke.“You’re the hero of this trip, fella,
for sniffing out Top Man.”He grabbed
the tank, but then Mega Man grabbed it on the other side!

“Wait a mega minute!” Mega Man snapped.“We wouldn’t even be here without the
Rush Rocket!”He was strong, but not
strong enough to wrest the tank away from the angry teenager.

“Duke chased that cat away!” Kevin shouted.

“Yeah?Well, not without Rush’s help, he didn’t!”

The dogs watched as their masters fought over
the energy tank.

Back at Dr. Right’s lab, the good scientist
used an electromagnetic crane that lowered this eighth energy tank into the
robot’s power chamber.He, Kevin, Mega
Man, Rush, and Duke were standing on the floor panel of the scaffolding, which
was up high again.“Thank you, N Team,”
he said.“All we need now is the
control device Dr. Wily built for the robot.”

“Dr. Right, are you sure you can trust
that mega rat?” Mega Man asked.

“There’s good in everybody, Mega Man,”
Right said.“You just have to look for
it.”

In his lab, Dr. Wily was watching the N Team
with his viewscreen.“Heh, heh, heh,
heh!And now, I’m going to clean up on
Videoland,” he laughed.He got up and
went over to a table in his lab.“After
my control device turns that peace robot deliciously evil,” he said, picking up
the control device, which looked like a joystick with all sorts of fancy
buttons.“But first, we have to get
Captain Nitwit and Mega Mite out of the way!”He watched as Kevin, Mega Man, and their dogs approached a blue
warp.“Heh, heh, heh!And I know just the bait to trap them
with. . . those doggies!”

“Come on, Mega Man,” Kevin called.“We earned ourselves some rest and
relaxation.”The two heroes and their
dogs stepped through the warp, which transported them to the world of
California Games.

“That’s okay, boy,” Mega Man told Rush as he
washed onto the shore.“You’ll beat his
tail off in the frisbee free-for-all!”

“Here we go again!” Rush said.“Arf!”

Kevin had decided that he should throw
the frisbee.After all, if Mega Man
threw it, it might go around the world and whack him in the head a second
later!“Get ready. . . set. . . go!”He tossed the frisbee, and the two dogs took
off after it barking as Mega Man came to Kevin’s side.The frisbee made an upward arc in the air,
and the dogs leapt after it.Suddenly,
a warp opened in the air to Skull Castle, and the dogs flew right into it!

Pressing several keys on his control panel,
Wily turned to the robot and said, “I like your attitude, Doc Robot.Go on!Enjoy!”Doc Robot went to a
lever on the wall and pushed it up as Mega Man and Kevin backed away from the
door.

“Stand back, Captain N!” Mega Man warned,
pointing his fist at the door.“I’m
going to blast the door!”Suddenly, a
trap warp opened beneath them and dumped them screaming into a tank full of
water!They spat out water when they
resurfaced, and Mega Man knocked some water out of his right ear when he
slapped his head with his left hand.A
circular section of the wall slid away, revealing a metal tube that came out of
the wall.

“Why do I get the feeling we’re about to go
on spin cycle?” Kevin asked.The tube
released a large robotic turtle into the tank.

On a platform above the tank, Wily watched
with satisfaction.“Heh, heh, heh!So nice of you to come to my pool party!” he
laughed wickedly.“I do hope
you’ll stay for dinner; my robo-turtles just love super-heroes!”Mega Man gasped as the villainous scientist
laughed.The robo-turtle started
snapping its jaws.“Heh, heh!If you’re still around after dinner, you can
watch me and my new peace robot take over Videoland!”

“You’ll pay for this, Dr. Wily!” Kevin said,
swinging his left fist at the scientist.

“Sorry, Captain Numbskull.I left my wallet in my other lab coat.”Wily left the room, and the door closed
behind him.

The tube released two more turtles, so three
turtles approached the two heroes.Kevin took out his Zapper and attempted to fire, but water popped out,
instead!“If we get out of this,” he
said, “remind me to have my Zapper waterproofed!”

“Hey, that’s it!” Mega Man exclaimed.“My one non-powered weapon. . . the Shadow
Blade!”He took out a Shadow Blade and
tossed it at the tube.It hit a button
on the device to which the tube was connected, causing it to vacuum all the
water and the turtles out of the tank.

“Now, all we have to do is keep it
from sucking us up, too!” Mega Man shouted.He grabbed a grate with a floor in his hands, and Kevin held on
to him.He pulled the grate off and
grabbed on to the lip of the drain underneath; he and Kevin coughed a bit as
the water flowed around them.The two
heroes dropped down through the drain and sat, coughing up the last of the
water.

Kevin breathed heavily.“That creep Wily just better not have hurt
our dogs,” he said.He and Mega Man
crawled down the pathway.

Wily told Doc Robot, “Well, I’m off to steal
my peace robot.”He jumped into his small
vehicle, which would carry only one passenger.“While I’m gone, make sure that Captain Nerdnick and Maggot Man enjoy
their misery.”

“Goody goody goody!” Doc Robot
exclaimed.“What about dogs?”

“Cut them from the team!”Wily closed the blue canopy and sped out of
the lab.

“Will-do, master!”The robot saluted, but unfortunately, he had formed his right
hand into a saw, and he cut part of his metallic hair!

In their prison cell, Duke was sniffing
around.“Careful, Duke,” Rush warned as
Duke investigated the glowing bars.“The bars may be booby-trapped.Arf!”Duke accidentally rammed
his nose into a bar, and he got a painful shock and yipped.He growled, backed away and suddenly got an
idea, as shown by a light-bulb popping on above his head.He barked, pointing to the floor with his
left front paw.He and Rush started
digging their way out through the dirt floor.

Meanwhile, Mega Man and Kevin were still
digging their way through the castle. . . and they were now digging through the
back wall of the cell!“We’ve been
digging forever!Do you think we’re
still in Skull Castle?” Mega Man asked.The wall fell away, and they entered the cell.

“Are you kidding?” Kevin asked.“We’re lucky if we’re still in
Videoland!”They gasped as they
discovered where they were.“Darn!Out of the frying pan and into the
fire!”They saw Duke and Rush dig up on
the outside of the cell!“Duke!”

“Rush!” Mega Man exclaimed simultaneously
with Kevin.

The dogs barked excitedly back at their
masters.Down the hall, Doc Robot’s
voice called, “Hey!Stop that!Bad!Bad dogs!”He fired Metal Blades
at the two dogs.

“Uh, oh!” Kevin said.“We’re outta here!”He and Mega Man jumped into the hole.Just after the first two blades had flown
by, Kevin and Mega Man popped their heads up from the hole, and Kevin started
blasting blades.

“Come on, Rush; kick it!” Mega Man said.Rush’s rockets did not want to start up at
first, but they did.Kevin, Mega Man,
and Duke held on as Rush narrowly avoided the blades.One blade sliced through a ventilation pipe, which fell towards
Doc Robot!The robot gasped as the pipe
fell on him and crush him.

Skull Castle sneezed and sent the four heroes
sprawling on the ground outside.A blue
warp opened in front of them, and Dr. Right came out.“Mega Man!Captain N!Dr. Wily’s stolen the peace robot!We’ve got to find him!”Several gigantic footsteps approached them.

“Ah, I think we just did,” Kevin
remarked, on his hands and knees.

The peace robot approached the heroes and
stopped.Wily was in the cockpit.“I guess you didn’t get my point,” he
said, operating the control.A bolt
shot past the five heroes.

“Whoa!” said Kevin, now in a sitting
position.He drew his Zapper and fired
at the large robot.“This game is
getting hot!Too hot!”His shots burned the robot’s right foot, and
the robot started stomping.

“I’ll crush you like insects for that!” Wily
shouted.As he stomped, a branch
holding a nest of robo-bees fell off a nearby tree and landed next to Duke, who
yapped.The canine suddenly got an
idea!“Good-bye, pests!” Wily said with
a despicable grin to Kevin, Mega Man, and Dr. Right.He saw two dogs flying towards him. . . Rush as a jet, holding a
rock with his legs, and Duke riding on Rush and holding the branch with the
robo-bee nest.“What the. . .?”As the dogs approached, Rush dropped the
rock, cracking a hole in the glass canopy.Wily hit the deck to avoid getting hit.As he looked up, he saw the branch with the robo-bee nest fall through
the hole and crash next to him.“Yipe!Yipe!Robo-bees!”He started racing in circles around the circular control chamber to
avoid being stung by the robotic bees.“Help!” he cried, and he muttered unintelligible cries as he ran.As he ran, the robot also ran in circles,
and the two humans and the robot on the ground laughed.

The peace robot’s left foot hit a stone, and
the robot fell on its face, demolished.Wily ran away, screaming, “Yaah!Bees!”He screamed unitelligible
phrases as the bees chased him away.

“I
wonder what got into Dr. Wily,” Dr. Right said.

Rush landed on the ground near them.“Something must be bugging him!” the
mechanical mutt laughed as Duke got off him.“Harf, arf, arf, arf!”

“Did you say something?” Kevin and Mega Man
asked each other simultaneously.They
turned to their dogs.

“Duke, you can talk!” Kevin exclaimed.Of course, they both knew which dog could
talk, but they just had to be competitive about whose dog was better.

“No way!” Mega Man said.“That was Rush!”The dogs looked at each other and then leapt on their masters,
proceeding to lick their faces! Dr.
Right smiled in amusement.